1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning frame, a process cartridge and an electrophotographic image forming apparatus onto which such a process cartridge is detachably mountable.
The electrophotographic image forming apparatus serves to form an image on a recording medium by using an electrophotographic image forming process and may be embodied, for example, as an electrophotographic copying machine, an electrophotographic printer (for example, LED printer, laser beam printer or the like), an electrophotographic facsimile apparatus or an electrophotographic word processor.
On the other hand, the process cartridge may integrally incorporate an electrophotographic photosensitive member and a charging means or a developing means and a cleaning means as a cartridge unit which is detachably mountable to a main body of the electrophotographic image forming apparatus, or may integrally incorporate an electrophotographic photosensitive member and the cleaning means and at least one of the charging means and the developing means as a cartridge unit which is detachably mountable to a main body of the electrophotographic image forming apparatus, or may integrally incorporate an electrophotographic photosensitive member and at least the cleaning means as a cartridge unit which is detachably mountable to a main body of the electrophotographic image forming apparatus.
2. Related Background Art
In the past, since a cleaning frame is disposed in the vicinity of the fixing means by the fact that the cleaning means is followed by the fixing means, due to inherent constructural feature of an image forming apparatus, the cleaning frame might be deformed by heat from the fixing means. Of course, the greater a sheet pass width the greater an amount of thermal deformation.
Conventionally, in an image forming apparatus using an electrophotographic image forming process, a process cartridge obtained by integrally incorporating an electrophotographic photosensitive member and a process means acting on the electrophotographic photosensitive member as a cartridge unit which is detachably mountable to a main body of the electrophotographic image forming apparatus has been used. By using such a process cartridge, since maintenance of the apparatus can be performed by the operator himself without any expert, operability can be improved remarkably. Thus, the process cartridge has widely been used with the image forming apparatus.
The process cartridge is constituted by a cleaning unit integrally including a charging means, a cleaning means and a photosensitive drum, and a developing unit integrally including developing means and toner to be supplied to the developing means. The cleaning unit and the developing unit are interconnected by joining members, thereby forming the process cartridge.
In an image forming apparatus onto which such a process cartridge is detachably mountable, in some cases, in a condition that the process cartridge is mounted, the cleaning unit is opposed to the fixing means.